Mike Huckabee’s Faith-Based Diplomacy
Ireland is considering legislation, the Occupied Territories Bill (“OTB”), which would ban the import of goods from Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. CNN notes that “If passed, the Irish bill would make Ireland the first EU member state to prohibit the import of goods produced in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.”
Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, was not going to take this affront lying down. On July 15, Huckabee took to X, formerly Twitter, with some undiplomatic words for the Irish:
Heaven’s Ambassador
President Donald Trump selected Huckabee to be US ambassador to Israel shortly after his re-election. The 70-year-old Huckabee has worn many hats during his long career: among them, governor of Arkansas, talk show host, and failed Republican presidential aspirant.
Huckabee is also an ordained Southern Baptist preacher. In a sense, Huckabee has never left the pulpit. Huckabee’s diplomacy rests on a fundamentalist reading of the Bible. This explains Huckabee’s unstinting support for the State of Israel.
On the December 6, 2024 “Truth and Liberty Show,” Huckabee declared that God has blessed Israel; it follows that people who protest against Israel “hate God.” Huckabee says that “If one is Satan, his goal is to destroy that which God loves. So that’s why we’re seeing it and to try to explain it any other way will never make sense.”
It is safe to say that Huckabee’s appointment is President Trump’s reward to the staggering 80% of White Evangelicals who gave Trump their votes in 2024. “Huck” describes himself as “an unapologetic, unreformed Zionist”: a Christian Zionist. Christian Zionists—of which there are some 20 to 50 million in the US—believe that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews—and only the Jews.
Christian Zionists are set for the Second Coming of Christ, which they expect any day now. The countdown to Christ’s return began when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Zionists, whether Christian or Jewish, now await the construction of the “Third Temple” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This cannot happen without Israel’s demolishing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Destruction of the Mosque will likely trigger a thermonuclear Armageddon, a prospect Christian Zionists welcome.
And the Palestinians? The Palestinians have no place in the divine scheme. But don’t worry: according to “Huck,” “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” (Vladimir Putin says the same thing about Ukrainians.) Huckabee said in 2017 that “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
Huckabee said in 2015 that if a Palestinian state is created, it should be in a neighboring Muslim nation such as Egypt, Syria, or Jordan. Or France. On July 25 of this year, Huckabee sarcastically added France to the list. That was after French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country will recognize Palestinian statehood in September.
It will take a miracle to create a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dead set against Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu says that a Palestinian state would “be a platform to destroy Israel.”
Other highly positioned officials in the Israeli government are just as adamant in their opposition to a Palestinian state. On August 14, Israeli Finance Minister Beelzebub Bezalel Smotrich, announced that within a few months, work would begin on a massive settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank which will consist of roughly 3,400 housing units. The new settlement, designated “E1,” will bisect the West Bank, rendering a contiguous Palestinian state practically impossible. Smotrich says that the new settlement “buries the idea of a Palestinian state” and called E1 “Zionism at its best.” The US has given its tacit assent to the project.
Helpful Huck says that the new settlement “does not violate international law” (the International Court of Justice disagrees). Ambassador Huckabee has said that the decision whether to build the E1 settlement will be left to Israel.
God, Grits, and Genocide
Huckabee refuses to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Huckabee tweeted on August 2 that “If Israel is committing a genocide, they’re really bad at it .. just like they’re bad at apartheid.”
Oh, I don’t know, Mike. Israel hasn’t killed or forcibly displaced everyone in Gaza (yet), but it has killed 60,000 so far with no end in sight.
Amnesty International declares that “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.” An August 18 report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declares for the first time that there is famine in some parts of Gaza, affecting half a million people—about one quarter of Gaza’s population at the end of 2024.
The Israeli government disagrees. In an August 22 post on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the IPC report as “an outright lie,” adding that “Israel does not have a policy of starvation. Israel has a policy of preventing starvation.”
There are several steps that must be taken for there to be a hope of ending the genocide in Gaza. There must be an immediate ceasefire in Gaza; the US must end its weapons shipments to Israel; and Israel must stop blocking humanitarian agencies’ access to Gaza. There must be a return to the UN food distribution system. At present, UN agencies in Gaza have been supplanted by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was created by the US and Israel and is their tool. The GHF operates a mere four food distributions centers; the UN agencies operated 400.
And, for the love of God, could the US please recall Mike Huckabee?
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